But with the right (well, make that wrong) stories, you get prophet. And we all know where that leads.

Dogs and cats, living together….mass hysteria!
–

Berkeley has them grouped within testate amoebas

.
Amœbæ have balls?!!

Either that, or wills.
–
We’re currently hoping that two skunks that have been enjoying the cat kibble at Chez cicely for the past couple of weeks will get the hint to move along and make their dinner reservations elsewhere. We’ve started taking the dishes in just before dark. We’d like to go back to providing Normal Service (i.e., the dishes stay out all night) to the outdoor cats after a month or so.
–

Is there a significant reason why squirrels haven’t been domesticated as pets?

I’m not sure you can even say there’s a ‘reason’ squirrels haven’t been domesticated. With domestication events, it seems to be a matter of ‘luck of the draw’ as much as anything. Why are dogs domesticated but not jackals? Why is it, of all the species of felines in the world, the domestic housecat is the one that ends up as a commonly accepted ‘pet’ and the rest are pretty much ‘untamable’? Why horses but not zebras?

The factors that go into domestication are complex, and I think much of the early steps may have happened without much direct human intervention.

Random drive-by…
Yow’s Alfie, Caine? Doing better I hope.
Katherine Lorraine, I hope the therapy helps with the inner monologue. I have one (a monologue, not a therapist), and geez does it make life interesting sometimes.
Oh, skunks. My canine recently got sprayed and it’s so silly how she just kept going back for more. I had to drag her away.
Crushes.. I guess I should be happy I haven’t drunk anything’d the party in whom I am interested. But I am “naturally drunk” and talk away to any person I like (friend or crush). I am consoling myself right now with the fact that I haven’t said anything toooo crazy yet? I am still trying to be slow (per your good advice Dhorvath!) and just be friends for now. Is rather hard though. Hope things work out with yours, Sili and DemetriusOfPharos. I’ll keep my fingers and toes crossed for all of us.
TURTLES!

I had the impression turtles were rather high maintenance. Of course, probably any pet will be, I suppose its silly to think otherwise. Plus I would generally prefer a fluffy something to a reptile – unless it was a snake. That would be cool.

***

Father Ogvorbis:

I would actually lean against a rabbit — they tend to bite and are not real cuddly. Perhaps a rat or two?

Really? I had a neighbor with rabbits when I was a kid, I don’t remember biting being a problem. But “not cuddly” would rather defeat the purpose. I had considered rats or gerbils in the past, but their short life might not match my temperament well.

***

TLC:

No, actually, get TWO rats.

I read exactly that when I was looking into pets previously – that basically, the rats (or gerbils) would be generally happier and healthier and live longer if they had a friend or several friends.

***

Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart:

Rats are intelligent, snuggly, can be litter-trained, and will eat just about anything. Plus, you know, super cute.

Chigau: I’m pretty sure skunk spray is considered universally repugnant in the animal kingdom. I’m not even sure skunks like it.

Demetrius: I’ve always enjoyed dumbo-rats. I’m not sure if that’s considered an actual ‘breed’ or not though. Every time I’ve seen one, it was amongst a litter of mostly non-dumbos. It’s pretty easy to recognize them… ears stick out instead of up.

Most rat ‘breeds’ only really differ in fur color (or having none in the case of the hairless variety (if you get a hairless people recommend a normally furred cagemate to cuddle with)). My personal favorite color-wise is probably the ‘hooded rat’, but that’s probably because it’s the most commonly encountered, and thus all the coolest rats I ever knew were hooded.

Sadie was a dumbo hooded rat, and she was beloved by all. Even people who didn’t end up liking ME much, still liked Sadie. She was the shit.

I’m not sure you can even say there’s a ‘reason’ squirrels haven’t been domesticated. With domestication events, it seems to be a matter of ‘luck of the draw’ as much as anything. Why are dogs domesticated but not jackals? Why is it, of all the species of felines in the world, the domestic housecat is the one that ends up as a commonly accepted ‘pet’ and the rest are pretty much ‘untamable’? Why horses but not zebras?

The factors that go into domestication are complex, and I think much of the early steps may have happened without much direct human intervention.

I’m not an expert though, this is just my own wild hypothesizing.

The criteria is actually fairly well known and we can predict more or less what can be domesticated well. Squirrels seem to meet many, but if I had to guess I’d say their natural nest building instincts are so destructive as to deter their utility as pets.

An hour or two ago, an opossum looked through the window! We got to watch it while it slowly walked away. :-)

Sili… should I just catch up with TET, or… may I ask where the problem is? Is there some good reason why you can’t “just” talk to her, or are you just afraid you’ll foul it up when you’ll try?

I will be spending the rest of my evening preparing my tenure talk on Thursday

:-) :-) :-)

Do you know much about xenophyopores?

They’re closely related to the foraminifera. :-)

I am wondering if its correct to call them amoebas?

Well, yes, but that’s just the name for a shape. Most of them (including most slime molds), but not all, form a clade called Amoebozoa, and the xenophyophores are not in that clade.

Amoebozoa, incidentally, is closely related to Opisthokonta, which consists mainly of the fungi and us (the animals).

Amœbæ have balls?!!

Heh. Testa, not testis. Shell/bowl.

Sorry. I thought I had talked about the groping at the Halloween party.

You had — long ago and without the Halloween context.

I’m not sure you can even say there’s a ‘reason’ squirrels haven’t been domesticated. With domestication events, it seems to be a matter of ‘luck of the draw’ as much as anything. Why are dogs domesticated but not jackals? Why is it, of all the species of felines in the world, the domestic housecat is the one that ends up as a commonly accepted ‘pet’ and the rest are pretty much ‘untamable’? Why horses but not zebras?

I can answer that last one: the experiment was recently done. It failed, because zebras are seriously aggressive. You let them grow up with humans, you try to ride them, and they just bite.

I’ve always enjoyed dumbo-rats. I’m not sure if that’s considered an actual ‘breed’ or not though.

I’ve already told you it is an actual breed. There’s a lot of good info out there on pet rats and different breeds, of which, there are a number. Don’t go talking shit if you can’t be bothered to do a little research.

Sweet Zombie Jesus, really? I knew the intelligent part, but I didn’t know the litter-trained part.

Rats are fabulous pets and easily litter trained. Mine have two litter boxes and I use Critter Litter, which is a good small animal litter for rats, ferrets, gerbils, rabbits, etc.

When it comes to rats, be sure they come from a reputable breeder. It’s best to get them around 3 to 5 months old, but don’t rule out rescue. My first rat was a rescue. There are assholes who breed rats for aggressiveness and hostility because there’s a market for those rats (assholes who own snakes and like to see a fight between the snake and the rat.) You can see my current two here and the set up I did for them here (You can also see Ash using his litter box.)

The Sailor, I updated about Alfie in the previous incarnation, but you must have missed it. He’s doing better, responding to the antibiotics. He is moving around more, but still not eating a great deal. The most I can tempt him with right now is a few steamed peas. I think we’ll get a bit of yogurt tomorrow and try our luck with that.

Jared Diamond explores this in Guns, Germs and Steel. In explaining why certain animals were domesticated and others weren’t he outlines what he calls the ‘Anna Karenina principle': Domesticable animals are all alike; Every undomesticable animal is undomesticable in its own way.

What this means is there are many criteria for any animal to be domesticated. Domesticated animals all met this criteria and thus are alike. Undomesticated animals each failed in their own way.

Some factors Diamond mentions:

Diet – Domesticating a large carnivore would be very inefficient. You’d have to feed it a lot of meat that could have gone feeding yourself. Especially inefficient if the meat itself was from a domesticated herbivore that you had to feed. The dog is really the only exception here.

Growth Rate – Much easier and less costly to capture and tame an elephant, for example, than waiting 15 years for it to grow full size.

Problems of Captive Breeding – Some animals for whatever reason don’t breed in captivity. Easy to see why this is a disqualifier.

Nasty Disposition – Relevant to this questions:

Why horses but not zebras?

As David mentions above, even modern efforts to domesticate zebras have proven unsuccessful. They’re just too aggressive.

Tendency to Panic

Social Structure – Humans benefit greatly from taking over the dominance hierarchy of the domesticated animal.

With domestication events, it seems to be a matter of ‘luck of the draw’ as much as anything. Why are dogs domesticated but not jackals? Why is it, of all the species of felines in the world, the domestic housecat is the one that ends up as a commonly accepted ‘pet’ and the rest are pretty much ‘untamable’? Why horses but not zebras?

No, not the luck of the draw. It mostly has to do with whether the animals have a pre-existing herd structure. Particularly one with an alpha animal. If there is an alpha, humans can step into the herd structure and use pre-existing behavioral patterns to get the animals to treat them as a member of the herd and/or the alpha.

At least, that’s what I recall from reading Jared Diamond’s thoughts on the subject a couple of years ago. It was part of his discussion about why civilizations from the Americas didn’t have many domesticated animals and failed to develop the wheel for a long time.

I’m super tired. I’m going to bed now. This is the earliest I’m going to bed since StrangeBoyfriend moved out! Congratulate me–it’s been really hard to put myself to bed since then. So I’ve not been getting enough sleep.

There are assholes who breed rats for aggressiveness and hostility because there’s a market for those rats (assholes who own snakes and like to see a fight between the snake and the rat.)

I was unaware of that, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.

Most reptile owners and experts I’ve known or read from recommend either feeding prekilled or being VERY cautious about live prey, due to risk of injury to the reptile. But then again, the reptile fancy in general is plagued by ‘tough guy’ types who only own snakes for shock value and really don’t give a single shit about the animal itself.

If I recall my Diamond correctly, he was talking primarily about domesticating large animals. (The main thrust of his argument on this point was the importance of large domestic animals in providing alternate sources of power as draft animals and beasts of burden, as well as reliable sources of food) So the factors he listed apply most stringently to large animals. And by large he meant equal to or bigger than your average human. Dogs, cats, and chickens, for example, were completely excluded from that chapter (I think).

Small animals tend to be domesticated for different reasons, and not all the same factors will always apply. A nasty disposition and a tendency to panic, for example, are less of a problem if your animal in question is the size of a cat or less.

I think part of my confusion there was about the definition of ‘breed’. When I was talking about rat breeds, I was thinking like ‘dog breeds’. It turns out, rat breeds are classified a little differently. When I asked if the Dumbo rat was actually a ‘breed’, I meant like in the sense of a golden retriever or german shepherd. Like an actual line of pure dumbo rats that only produce dumbo pups.

Morning
Not good. The kids didn’t give me two hours of sleep in a row and are now as grumpy as I am.
I need a nap in the afternoon, because it’s generally frowned upon to fall asleep at your workplace.

Demetrius of Pharos

So I’ve been thinking about getting a rabbit. Any advice on breed, feeding, etc?

As somebody who proudly doesn’t own two rabbits (I only clean and feed them), I’ll share a bit.
First of all, getting a rabbit is a bad idea. One rabbit is an unhappy rabbit.
You need at least two of them.
Two does don’t go together, what goes well are a doe and a castrated buck, or two castrated bucks. But that means that unless you’re getting already castrated bucks, you need two cages at first and they also smell quite a bit.
I’d generally discourage indoor-keeping. I know, that’s how most people keep their rabbits, but unless you’re making quite some room rabbit-safe for them, they’re mostly poor creatures who don’t know what running, jumping or digging is.
Oh, on the plus-side, they’re easily litter-trained and some of them are extra-cuddly

sweetcorn vs. cow corn
Hard to mistake one for the other ;)
Yep, it’s grown in large areas in Europe as fodder

animal stories
Well, the wildlife here seems to be pretty boring (no skunks), except for the bald-headed eagles (there’s a zoo with a large falconery next door), so my best story is about cows on a single track road on Achill Island in Ireland. Since the three cows were blocking the road, I had to get out of the car to do some “herding”.
The cows totally agreed that they should move away from the maniac who was shouting and waving her arms, but they also thought that the quickest way to do so would be in running on the road. It took a while and some running to convince them that off the road would be better.
It’s one of Mr’s fondest memories from that holiday.

domestic animals gone wild
Well, there are swarms of parrots, groups of kangaroos and a herd of nandus living in Germany.
The “funny” thing is that when you have an accident with one of them, your insurance doesn’t pay because they only cover native wild animals. Domestic animals are covered by their owners, and kangaroos by nobody.

I’m pissed. I just realized that in addition to the project I’m working so goddamn hard on with no success, I also have a paper due tomorrow on two chapters I haven’t read.
You know, besides the test. And the translation.
:(

Regarding pet ownership, I wanted to weigh in on their lifespan as a major factor. I thought an African Grey parrot would be a neat pet after interacting with one for a week at a cousin’s house (technically still do). Then I learned they can live like 50 years. Can’t really commit to that at the moment (and definitely not at the time).
—-

Regarding pet ownership, I wanted to weigh in on their lifespan as a major factor. I thought an African Grey parrot would be a neat pet after interacting with one for a week at a cousin’s house (technically still do). Then I learned they can live like 50 years. Can’t really commit to that at the moment (and definitely not at the time).

Bah, tell me about it. Apparently my Sturnus Vulgaris can live up to 22 years, and he’s about five or six now, so I’m stuck with the little asshole for quite a while.

(I kid, of course. Jack is truly an insult to his maniraptoran ancestors, but he’s MY insult.)

Your issues about where humanity came from is not so much a problem of your head (brain) but your heart (soul). Until repent and ask Jesus to come into your heart you will always be confused and wrong in your worldview which will disallow you, I and your fellow bloggers the ability to have a rational discussion based on the syllogism that was the foundation of Western civilization:
If A = B, then A + B = C

There’s definitely a problem with Washington’s head (brain) here.

He never explains what the fuck A,B, or C are or what this alleged syllogism, that’s the foundation of Western civilization, was suppose to even mean. It’s in not-even-wrong territory.

On July 26, 1956, the House of Representatives voted 373 to 9 to cite Pete Seeger and seven others (including playwright Arthur Miller) for contempt, as they failed to cooperate with House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their attempts to investigate alleged subversives and communists. Pete Seeger testified before the HUAC in 1955.
In one of Pete’s darkest moments, when his personal freedom, his career, and his safety were in jeopardy, a flash of inspiration ignited this song. The song was stirred by a passage from Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel “And Quie Flows the Don”. Around the world the song traveled and in 1962 at a UNICEF concert in Germany, Marlene Dietrich, Academy Award-nominated German-born American actress, first performed the song in French, as “Qui peut dire ou vont les fleurs?” Shortly after she sang it in German. The song’s impact in Germany just after WWII was shattering. It’s universal message, “let there be peace in the world” did not get lost in its translation. To the contrary, the combination of the language, the setting, and the great lyrics has had a profound effect on people all around the world.

Is there a significant reason why squirrels haven’t been domesticated as pets?

Because squirrels are mean little shits?

I see I’ve been soundly beat me to the GGS reference. I think you might really like the read, TLC. Sure, not every criterion would match to small animals, but the main point was that if any of them are bad, then the whole enterprise isn’t worth it. I would think that the benefit side of the equation would be even smaller for pets than work/food animals, so the barrier to domestication would be a lot lower to throw it on the side of not worth it.

Sili, I had missed that. Still, it sounds like you’re appropriately abashed and willing to pay for it by not initiating contact, which still puts you better than someone who tries to brush it off and explain it away somehow.

Demetrios,
I only have experience with one turtle, but she’s been pretty easy: Feed ‘em, let ‘em roll around, clean the tank when it gets stinky. They need a filter, a basking lamp and a heat lamp for the tank, but beyond that, nothing too special is required. The initial setup can be expensive, but you’ll have your turtle a long time.

Plus, they do (or at least Emery does) show affection. Emery also comes when you call her (albeit slowly), but I haven’t yet figured out if she’s responding to her name or my tone of voice.

Caine’s the rat expert, but yeah, my late rat Simon was litter and paper trained. He pretty much figured it out for himself, so as long as I remembered to put paper towels out when I got home from work (and he was let out of his cage), there were no accidents.

Speaking of little pets, has anyone seen trinioler around lately? He has a cavy he likes very much.
We have two cavies. Their enjoyment has been somewhat muted by the fact that the child who wanted them is allergic to them, and all of the care duties have fallen to mom (obviously).

Hmmm, I have one of those random biological questions that only ever occur to me at 4 AM.

Why do honeybees die after stinging? I mean I know how it happens, barbs get lodged, venom sac comes out when bee flies away, and it keeps pumping. But as far as I know, honeybees are the only ones who sting that way- other bees and wasps have reusable stingers.

Why would this evolve? I know that in an insect colony, individual survival doesn’t matter, just the colony as a whole, but why do honeybees and apparently no others have a weapon that’s designed to kill them after they use it just once? Are there any theories about why this would evolve? What conceivable selective advantage does it offer?

I just googled this to find out that a cavy is a guinea pig. We* have one. It is apparently enormous and fat for a guinea pig. I wanted to name it “Sewell”, but “Baby Jackie Piggie” was the majority opinion.

*My daughter and wife have one anyway. I do not like any of the pets, and so am disinclined to claim ownership.

Here’s an answer to an unasked biological question: when expressing a binomial, (e.g. Saccharomyces cerevisiae), the first part (Saccharomyces) should be capitalized, whereas the second part (cerevisiae) should not, even if derived from a proper noun. Both should be either italicized or underlined.

</pedantry>

I am now just about off for my morning one serving (== 4 espresso shots) of coffee.

Here’s an interesting observation. Last night I fired off a big bulk copy from a CSV file into Postgresql on my Mac. Several hours later (a not unexpected amount of time – as I say, it was a big copy; somewhat more than 6,000 CSV files, each about 1K in size, with 5 columns of short pieces of text and integers).

This morning, loading web pages took, like, forever for the first few. Purely guessing, but I was wondering if the OS had created some kind of “all-Postgresql” temporary data in the paging system, that took a huge amount of time to flush out. My DSL modem showed massive activity for, like, five minutes with just the tiniest bits of web pages showing, then everything started operating normally.

Why are dogs domesticated but not jackals? Why is it, of all the species of felines in the world, the domestic housecat is the one that ends up as a commonly accepted ‘pet’ and the rest are pretty much ‘untamable’? Why horses but not zebras?

No, not the luck of the draw. It mostly has to do with whether the animals have a pre-existing herd structure.

The silver fox domestication experiment suggests there is more to it, at least in the case of the dog. There’s a theory that the first stage of wolf->dog domestication was “auto-domestication”: wolves hanging around human settlements to scavange, where tolerating human proximity and behaving non-aggressively towards humans would have been selected for. One support for this is that feral dogs do not revert to wolflike appearance and behaviour within a few generations, but adopt this scavanging strategy. I think something similar may be true of domestic cats – as soon as there were grain stores, cats would be attracted to them to prey on rodents, and would have been encouraged by the stores’ owners. Feral cats are quite social, often living in colonies, unlike the African wildcat which is the domestic cat’s main ancestor.

“Only half of [US] Catholics know that the church teaches that the bread and wine of Holy Communion actually transform into the physical body and blood of Christ, but of those who know, the vast majority believe it”

And here’s a moment of Aaaaaargh.
I got the wrong date given as to when the workers would turn up to exchange the TV cables. So I got a bit suspicious when I heard them working on the balcony underneath.
I called down and asked “when are you coming here?” and they said “in 10 minutes”.
So I had 10 minutes to clear the bedroom and the livingroom.
You can’t enter the kitchen at the moment, but at least they’ll be finished before the kindergarten closes…

FUCK the Uni paper is gone to utter dribble. The editorial page is filled with little fundy conservative Kotch/Kato Institute recruit hopefuls posting things like “Occupy Wallstreet anti-sematic” and “Out of touch Liberal Reform Does more Harm” or “We may have lost many of our freedoms but at least we still can spend our money the way we want…unless Obamacare has its way!”

Seriously, FUCK the last one. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT! This anus gobbling turd snorkeling piss gargler smiles and is fine with indefinite detention, torture, surveillance, and body rights being revoked on brown people, the poor and women…but touch HIS wallet and now it’s a human rights violation! I’m not exaggerating either…that’s the quote “We lost many freedoms blah blah blah but at least we can still spend our money!”

occupy wallstreet is right; the press, on apparently even the shitty uni level, are fucking ringers.

Falconry enthusiasts long await their messiah who according to prophecy will find a way to teach raptors to wield shotguns.

No, I don’t think so. Why would anyone want to sully the elegant killing machine that is a hawk with crude firearms? More to the point, why would I want a hawk to be able to blow my head off for looking at her wrong?

I don’t know anything about falconry, but it does make me strangely happy that there is still a Hereditary Grand Falconer of England. (Though the office no longer involves any actual duties, as far as I’m aware.) The title is currently held by the Duke of St Albans.

Okay, I picked #1 up at the kindergarten, dug out our beds again (all that stuff had to go somewhere and it doesn’t help that I own about half a mile of fabric) and now I’ll have 10 min of peace before I’m off to work.
That nap I talked about? Well, there’s always tomorrow…

A spokeswoman for Tim Hortons says the couple was asked to leave after they “went beyond public displays of affection” while visiting the outlet three weeks ago.

What is that even supposed to mean?
Did they undress and have sex on one of the tables?
Or were they, you know visibly more than just friends?

I see high-school age couples making out in public all the time. I don’t like it, but I don’t fall down in a dead faint because no-one’s thinking of the children. I would lay down money that whatever the couple was doing, it would not be nearly as much of an ordeal if it were me and my girlfriend doing it. Straight privilege means at most, people roll their eyes and move on.

“These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage?” Eastwood opined. “I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of.”

“They go on and on with all this bullshit about ‘sanctity’ — don’t give me that sanctity crap! Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.”

Dogs think that “Odor of Last Week’s Roadkill” is something to share with humans.

And so is steer manure that has been spread on flowerbeds. After all, if we didn’t like it, we wouldn’t make it so available, now would we?

When I was a kid, we had an exceedingly-woolly cockerpoo, and in the spring, just when the local housewives were prepping their flowerbeds for the annual neighborhood “MY Flowerbed is Better Than YOURS” competition, without fail, he would escape from the yard. He’d be gone for two, maybe three days, and come back home with his fur densely matted with dried-in browny/greeny steer manure; I can only assume that he was in charge of Quality Control, and felt that it was his duty to roll in ‘em all.

He always looked so betrayed when we’d wash him (in the backyard, with the hose). All his hard work, all gone….
–

Why horses but not zebras?

According to Wikipedia, “Attempts have been made to train zebras for riding, since they have better resistance than horses to African diseases. Most of these attempts failed, though, due to the zebra’s more unpredictable nature and tendency to panic under stress. For this reason, zebra-mules or zebroids (crosses between any species of zebra and a horse, pony, donkey or ass) are preferred over purebred zebras.”

And from here, “Zebras are also notoriously difficult to catch. They have evolved superb early-warning mechanisms , such as peripheral vision far superior to other horses. Often bad tempered, they grow increasingly antisocial with age and once they bite, they tend not to let go. A kick from a zebra can kill — and these creatures are responsible for more injuries to American zookeepers each year than any other animal.”

Additionally, in order to execute their long-term plan for world domination (while concealing their essentially Evil nature), horses needed to harness (note careful choice of word) the global spread of humanity to conceal (under a carefully-crafted semblance of “utility”) their own increase in numbers and territory. Hence their pose of “domestication”.
While zebras, as equines, do have an obvious tendency toward Evil, it is a more diffuse, less directed form of Evil, and therefore they need not engage in any pretense of domestication. In a sense, zebras and horses fill different niches on behalf of the Greater Evil.
–

An hour or two ago, an opossum looked through the window! We got to watch it while it slowly walked away. :-)

For a relatively trivial effort (i.e., putting the kibble inside a cage trap overnight), I could get you a ‘possum for your very own.

Speaking of little pets, has anyone seen trinioler around lately? He has a cavy he likes very much.
We have two cavies. Their enjoyment has been somewhat muted by the fact that the child who wanted them is allergic to them, and all of the care duties have fallen to mom (obviously).

Oh Munchkin is great. She’s very much nagging me all the time. She’s big now, over 1kg. I now limit a lot of the more fatty guinea pig foods, and she mostly just eats cucumbers(6-7 a week…) and parsley with some bell pepper and a lot of pellet food and hay.

She will play tug of war with me if I move her blanket or hay on her…

Also, she refuses to let me cut her nails, so I have to take her to the vet.

That sucks for your cavies. :( How are you caging them? I ended up building a home-made cage, because A it was cheaper and B less wasteful of wood chips. She also loves it way more than the old wood chip commercial cage.

Carolina Balloon Festival. Pretty cool but easily one of the most logistically unorganized events I’ve ever attended. And they’ve been doing it for 38 years. Waited in line for 1 1/2 hours at a remote parking lot waiting to be picked up by shuttles that seemingly could not see the big ass LOT #3 sign as they drove by full of people from the lots on either side of us. I finally had to call the damn event and explain to them what idiots they were. This was astonishing to the 100 or so others in line with me as I heard whispers of “where did he get the number to call” and “he must know someone” and “is he in charge here”.

Hell, a nice set of rca cables can attract my attention, I like things that work.
___

Sili,
Coming off a relationship is a vulnerable time, if she is close enough that you would naturally have offered support that seems reasonable, but seriously even if you did make headway, it would be with a person in transition and unfair to both her and you.
___

AE,
Well, just bring that vulvan thought in with you. It would calm my nerves anyways.
___

Sally Strange,
Dude!
___

Re nym capitalization, I do this, a lot. It bothers me that I am so ingrained as to put capitals where they don’t fit solely because I am addressing someone. It’s a work in progress.
___

cicely,

Dogs and cats, living together….mass hysteria!

Is this true?
___

aladegorrion,
I am sorry you are finding it hard, time is the best gift you can give right now, and it will slip by before you know it.
___

rorschach,
I am troubled by the current of longevity equating to happy in that SA article you linked. In short, I think ‘Happily Ever After’ is a horrible notion. It leads to expectation, entitlement, deliberate ignorance, and broken people when none of those things work. I would prefer a stronger cultural narrative about how relationships can change, and how to do so with minimal harm.
___

Therrin,

Such an elegant summary of the Republican thought process.

So the Republicans are non-Abellian?
___

Brownian,
Because it’s so terrible for anyone to witness people who are happy together.
I couldn’t care less about PDAs. Scratch that. I suspect we could do with more loving on the streets, but I do recognize that says more about me than anything else.
___

Rev,
I kinda like Squint. I mean, I have long watched his films, but the things he does outside of that intrigue as well.

trinioler – hi! Glad Munchkin is doing well. Ours are in the biggest cage we could find, although I know it’s not big enough to be optimal (it’s about 7 sq ft I think, and we have a large round “outdoor” ring that we let them “exercise” in, meaning they just sit there and eat grass). Did you build yours out of wire cubes, or something else?
Celery is their favorite; are there fatty vegetables? We had a bit of a time dealing with bedding; the one that worked the best seemed to have something I was allergic to, because the whole time it was in the house I felt like I was having a constant low-grade asthma attack. We’ve settled on aspen with a sprinkling of CareFresh on top. They’re happy, just don’t get handled as much as they probably should.

I built mine out of wire cubes. For the flooring, I got those exercise foam pads. They’re non-reactive, non-toxic, and taste disgusting. So guinea pig pee has no effect on them, and pigs don’t eat them. Then I have a layer of two towels, and then quilt batting on top.

Its cheap, easy to clean(I have a stack of towels just for the cage as well as multiple sheets of batting), and cheap. Towels can be had from the local thrift store, and quilt batting is really cheap at walmart. I just shake the batting off, vacuum up everything, broom up the rest, spray vinegar water mix on the padding, and wash the towels and batting. I can clean it, put in new towels and batting within about 20 minutes or so.

She gets so happy every time I clean the cage. I would recommend moving away from wood shavings. Even the kind meant for cavies can generate some dust which gets in their lungs. :/

Fatty vegetables would be spinach, coriander, and kale, as well as fruits.

Hmph. Here was I all ready to admit I’d been wrong about something, and reap the kudos that gains around here, when I find I was at least half-right after all! I predicted that Obama would not pull all US forces out of Iraq at the end of the year, and it’s now been announced that he is, having failed to talk the Iraqis into giving any troops that stayed immunity from Iraqi law. But according to Ed Brayton, there will still be 5,500 mercenaries in Iraq under State Department control!

Homestuck finally updated today after more than a month of silence. And it’s freaking epic. Everyone here should read it because it’s awesome and the music is also extremely awesome… I’m listening to the new album (that also came out today) and it’s sooooo good…

But that’s not why I bring it up here.

I’d love to see someone debate William Lane Craig with this. WLC could go on his shpiel about how ‘something has to have caused the big bang and we know it has to be God because there’s no other way it could have happened and resulted in intelligent life bluh bluh bluh…(insert bovine excrement here).’

His opponent could reply, “Well, Andrew Hussie theorized in 2011 that (spoiler alert) universes could reproduce and propagate through natural processes, and that intelligent life itself could be the natural process responsible for the propagation of new universes, and the reason that each new universe seems ‘fine tuned’ for intelligent life is because intelligent life is both required for the process and in control of the process… and since the whole process occurs ‘outside of time’ then it’s not subject to causality so a particular universe could in fact be indirectly responsible for it’s own creation – no god needed. Now, do we have any evidence for this process? Of course not. It’s just a story. But we don’t have any evidence of a god, either, and the mere fact that this story fits the evidence we do have better than ‘god did it’, and it makes fewer assumptions about things we have no way of knowing about, it actually makes Mr. Hussie’s story more likely than god.
And at least Hussie never pretends that he didn’t make it up out of whole cloth.

Cool – I had read about using towels etc, but I didn’t know if they had any digging instincts that required the fluff to nose through (or how gross it was to clean). It would be very nice to be able to cut out that expense. I would think their claws rip up quilt batting?
We use all timothy hay, although they loooove whatever fresh grass is in the yard. If they pull it out from the hayrack and it touches the ground, though, they won’t eat it. (grrr) They are pains in the butt about pellets – won’t touch them even if I try to force it by withholding other foods.

…oh, and given that they won’t eat pellets, we’re limited to guinea pig foods that are a mixture of different things with a low pellet component. And since the child is allergic to nuts, we have to get one that has no nuts, which limits us down to what is coincidentally the single most expensive food out there. *sigh*

You could try home-drying vegetables they like as a replacement. They’ll keep, and can be cheap.

The digging instincts depend on the guinea pig. Munchkin used to dig a lot, but not anymore. I often give her newspaper or towels she can burrow under however, which she does often.

I also use a hay trough, which munchkin loves. It keeps most of the mess in one spot, so you can add extra absorbency or fresh daily small towels, or whatever. I just take a plastic planter and cut a side in it, so she can get in and out, put newspaper on the bottom of the planter, and add hay. She mostly poops and pees in there, so cleaning it daily handles most of the mess.

Carlie, I use soft cloths for my rats. I picked up a cheap polar fleece throw at Big Lots and cut it into small squares for their various sleeping places. I cut up old pjs made out of soft cotton and a couple of old bedsheets too. I don’t use towels, because rat nails snag in them very easily (don’t know if that’s a problem with Guinea pigs.) Easy enough to toss in the washer on a regular basis and I have a large supply of them, so dirty ones don’t have to be washed immediately.

Everyone should watch the show “Ancient Aliens”. It’s fantastically stupid. Claiming that a American gold figurine can ONLY be an airplane rather than any animal…when the figure is clearly shown to have antennae carved into and other bug features is hilarious.

Dozens of people are planning to protest outside a Tim Hortons in Blenheim on Thursday after a same-sex couple says they were told to leave the coffee shop because they were lesbians.

A spokeswoman for Tim Hortons says the couple was asked to leave after they “went beyond public displays of affection” while visiting the outlet three weeks ago.

Goddamn small town Canada.

Something similar happened in my town a few months back. Two lesbian teens kicked out of the public pool for apparently ‘making out in the hot tub’. Never mind all the hetero teens doing it. Apparently they were followed into the changing room by a lifeguard and everything.

Have you ever had the displeasure of interacting with otter feces?

I may have sniffed some otter turds on a beach once, but it was only because I wanted to know what they smelled like.

We haven’t been going out as much due to I’m unemployed, so this is a real treat coming up! Sure hope the downtown location has Dale’s Pale Ale on tap the way their Station North one does. I may have to have three servings!

You just have to withhold longer.
Fuck, if I was legitimately starving, I might eat mushrooms.

I might.

While that tends to work with dogs (and sometimes cats), it doesn’t work so well with rodents. They simply drink more and will chew on anything except the hated food. I can’t get my rats to eat lab blocks, never have been. I tried the ‘withhold’ business. No go. I’m talking over a week of ‘withhold’.

That makes me think the stuff must be pretty awful. I don’t push it. I don’t know about Guinea Pigs, but there are all kinds of different dry mixes you can do yourself and I’d say getting mixed veg and greens are more important than trying to push commercial pellet food on them.

I find that mushrooms don’t seem to taste like much of anything to me. At least, that’s my experience. Like, a mushroom burger just ends up being this flat thing, like eating styrofoam, but without any of the latter’s chemically goodness.

I assume they’re (mostly) being prepared wrong. But at least it means I don’t object to them.

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The engineer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, “How odd. Scottish sheep are black.” “No, no, no!” says the physicist. “Only some Scottish sheep are black.” The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions’ muddled thinking and says, “In Scotland, there exist at least one sheep, with at least one side of which appears to be black from here.”

Richard Austin: I can’t really describe what the mushrooms add to the mix. Maybe it’s how they soak up bacon fat when I fry them, but there’s something about the texture too. They definitely add a taste, but fuck if I know how to describe it. Umami?

Human food preferences are weird. Can anyone name any other species anywhere where some members are strict herbivores, whilst others are highly carnivorous, with every single variation in between?

Caine – good to know that it’s not just my inability to be stern and forceful that is keeping the piggies from eating their pellets. I mainly want them for the standardized constant vitamin C influx (and extra fiber). All of the cavy info guides stress pellets as part of a good diet. Mine just don’t agree.

If the tastes of our (ex)Hamsters are any indication, there are huge differences between brands. Some, they would stow underground in a matter of minutes, others would never be touched ever. Of course, I have never seen a Hamster get positively hungry as we were never so cruel as to take away their entire storage.

Caine, re ratfood:
Interesting. As I know you know, many generations comprising (probably) millions of individual actual labrats have thrived (or rather survived to–usually–termination, but many reproducing too) on nothing but those food-blocks. Maybe you just have to start ‘em out on it.

I used to be on a chase team and if you chased for 5 flights you got a ride. It’s amazing, except for the burners it’s totally quiet because you’re flying at the same speed as the wind. Definitely a different experience than aircraft, rotorcraft or even sailplanes.
Scary fucking landing tho.

WARNING: AIRPLANE STORY
Some years ago I was flying a Piper 180 out of IND one fine day and heading to BMG. Just after takeoff, cruising along at 4.5k ft I see this dot at my altitude on the horizon. It isn’t changing aspect.
One of the tenets of navigating is that if it’s not moving right or left, it’s either coming at you or going away.

Since I am in an approach corridor, and closure rates with heavy metal can exceed 400 mph, I diverted up. Then left. And called ATC to see if they had any traffic.

At least in Europe I always heard that hot air balloons had their own separate class of aircraft and so I always assumed they would be registered with traffic controllers. I’m far from an expert though.

It’s possible to get them plenty of fiber and and vitamin content if you can get them onto some of the above. Of course, there will be things in any mix they don’t like – fussy little bugs, the lot of ‘em.

Interesting. As I know you know, many generations comprising (probably) millions of individual actual labrats have thrived (or rather survived to–usually–termination, but many reproducing too) on nothing but those food-blocks. Maybe you just have to start ‘em out on it.

I know! They are always recommended. Always. I think it is a matter of them starting out on them and having nothing else. Every fancy rat I’ve seen in a pet store (or in rescue) has been on a commercial dry food mix, not blocks. Not one of my rats has so much as touched a lab block and I tried out one brand after another.

Mushrooms? I hate them, can’t stand the texture. Somewhere between rubber and flesh, it makes me gag. It’s a pity, too, as the flavor is actually quite nice. I don’t mind a mushroom gravy as long as the actual solid mushrooms are picked out of it.

Jokes…

A duck walks into a bar. Says to the bartender, “Got any raisins?”

Bartender: “Nope, no raisins here.” Duck leaves.

Next day, the same fuck walks into the bar. “Got any raisins?”

Bartender: “No I don’t have any raisins, this isn’t a grocery store. I told you that yesterday, weirdo!” The duck leaves.

Next day, it’s the same duck, back again! “Got any raisins?”

Bartender: “No I don’t have any fucking raisins! And if you ever come back here asking for raisins again, I’m gonna nail your fucking beak to the bar!” (Bartender’s voice is best read in a Brooklyn accent.) So, the duck leaves.

Next day, the duck comes back! He sidles up to the bar. “Got any nails?”

Bartender: “No you idiot, this isn’t a fucking hardware store! I don’t have any nails!!”

The chair of the physics department goes to the provost for the annual budget review. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is we have a lot of exciting things going on in the department – some potential Noble-prize winning stuff. The bad news is we need a new particle accelerator which will cost $10M.”

The Provost is shocked. “That is a lot of money. Why couldn’t you be like the math department – all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper.”

I swear i rememeber someone mentioning this, but the search on the phone is frustrating, so I’ll out it to the horde Has anyone here grown their own culinary mushrooms? I have seen plug kits for oyster, shiitake and others. I remember a blue oyster cult joke…

I think the ref was recent, so whomever posted it probably hasn’t seen much growth yet, but I’d love to hear if there are any others with experience.

For my grandmother, her father was a Great Polish Patriot. He was an officer in the Polish Lancers, fighting the evil Russians. I never had the heart to tell her that the Polish Lancers were part of the Czarist Russian Army.

Apparently, their estate (very minor nobility) was about 3/4 in Russian Poland and about 1/4 in the Autrian-Hungarian Empire. Heironymous became an officer in the Russian Army and held said commission until 1905. When he, and many other Polish officers got kicked out because many of them had the odd idea that Poland, which was an independent nation, should be independent.

He could see which way the wind was blowing so he picked up the whole family and moved to the Boston, Massachussetts area. My grandmother was born in 1912, in the US, but attended a Polish school because Heironymous was sure that Poland would become independent.

Well, turns out his optimism was well founded. In late 1919, they picked everyone up, my 7-year-old-at-the-time grandmother included, and moved back to Poland, buying a couple of houses jsut outside Warsaw. He managed to not become an officer in the new Polish army (he was busy trying to build a career as a banker) but Hieronymous and Pilsudski gad some bad blood (could be that Hieronymous, being a minor noble, and Pilsudski, being a socialist, just disagreed about politics). So they emigrated back to the US.

Yes, that’s the true punchline. My family was so Polish, they emigrated to the US twice.

Now now, from one drunk person to another, I’ve always thought you were strange but pleasant. The sort of person that is probably worth making the effort to get to know.

Thank you. That’s very kind of you. I like strange.

Uh… I’m not hitting on you.

I didn’t think you were. Must mean I’m getting better at this shit.

DemetriusOfPharos says:

@Sili – I can relate. I drunk-PM’d my crush recently. It… it didn’t go well. I mean, I didn’t say anything stupid (verified by a third party) and we’re still friends (she did say she valued our friendship), but I’m still alone and pining. Ah, well, such is life.

Thanks. This woman valued my friendship as well. I hope you’re better at not being an arse than I am.

In the end I managed to drink myself into enough of a stupor that I couldn’t type anymore.

And I didn’t mean to refer to her as “girlwoman” as an insult. My strikethrough of the first word went AWOL.

First Approximation says:

Thanks. I thought your hat was cool.

Thanks. The woolies who chose it for me have good taste.

Anyway, you should be more worried about our blog host. From what I hear this sharp toothed, cyper-pistol wielding blogger is a soft spoken teddy bear in meatspace!

It’s just a ruse to lure you in.

David Marjanović, OM says:

Sili… should I just catch up with TET, or… may I ask where the problem is? Is there some good reason why you can’t “just” talk to her, or are you just afraid you’ll foul it up when you’ll try?

I talked to – ‘confessed’ so to speak – when she broke up with her last boyfriend a coupla years ago. Obviously a dick move meant to exploit her vulnerability. On the other hand, waiting could also have been an underhanded attempt at lulling her into a false sense of security.

I’m afraid, yes. But I also can’t pop out of nowhere after two years and say “O HI! I stalked your internet activity and saw that you’ve just gone through a breakup with your boyfriend of two years. Wanna boink?” I have nothing to offer her in terms of companionship or advice. I just miss her and talking to her, but I can barely recall just what we actually talked about. I’m just pining stupidly.

–o–

Classical Cipher, Murmur Muris, OM says:

ALL of my fanships are disturbing.
That is all.

I’m sure mine must be as well, given the source material.

That said, I do loves me some femdom.

–o–

David Marjanović, OM says:

Heh. Testa, not testis. Shell/bowl.

I did not know that.

–o–

Caine, Fleur du Mal عنتر says:

Oh, I brought my spine home today!

Ain’t atheists supposed to be spineless? Or is that just the invertebrate Overlord?

Place the chicken broth in a large pot. Mix in the chicken thighs, adzuki beans, wild rice, onions, and garlic. Season with sage, thyme, and rosemary. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and cook 1 hour.
Remove chicken from the pot, shred with a fork, and set aside.
Stir the sweet potato into the pot. Continue cooking about 5 minutes, until sweet potato is slightly tender. Mix in the zucchini, yellow squash, and escarole. Continue cooking 15 minutes.
Return the shredded chicken to the pot. Cook until heated through. Increase the amount of broth if the soup seems too thick.